We still have a chance to increase the NIH budget for this year. Go here to contact your US Senators and Representatives to request that they increase the NIH budget — the last congress failed to vote on a budget for the NIH, resulting in a FY2007 budget identical to that of FY2006. From the website with the petition:

The Congress reconvened today in order to finish the FY 2007 appropriations process. The Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill (Labor-HHS) that funds the NIH is one of the nine bills that still need to be considered. Unless funds are added to the NIH appropriation, the budgets of all but three of NIH’s Institutes and Centers (IC’s) will shrink for the second year in a row. After adjusting for inflation, NIH support of biomedical research will decline for the third year in a row.

Go here to contact your congressional representatives. The website contains a form letter, but you are urged to provide personal anecdotes if you have them (ie, your lab will be shut down if the NIH budget does not increase).

Comments

This is really an enormously important thing to do right now…the NIH budget has been messed with in recent years for all the wrong reasons. Even the administration grudgeingly seemed to agree with that.

The upshot is that now with the House under Democratic leadership and the Senate split, we have probably the best chance in years of getting NIH funding back to where it needs to be to support our vibrant research enterprise.